Nipsey Hussle & DJ Skee recently announced their new joint venture between All Money In & Skee Music. The two recently spoke to XXL about why they teamed up, new projects in the works and to address any rumors that Nipsey may still be signing to MMG’s West Coast division:

On partnering with DJ Skee & Skee TV/Music:

You guys did Bullets Aint Got No Names Vol. 1 together in 2007, so you’ve been working together for a while, but why did you feel like now is a time to partner up in a new way?

Nipsey Hussle: From my perspective, both what I’m doing and what Skee’s doing—we’ve made a lot of progress. The platform that he’s built, with SkeeTV, Skee Music, his whole brand, it compliments what I’m doing as an independent artist. I think Skee saw ahead of time, and he built a home for new artists. I anticipated it also. It was just a conversation, after we worked together on the TMC project, when we brought it up, it just made sense for what we were both doing. It’s an organic fit.

DJ Skee: Absolutely. I’ve always been a fan and supporter since day one. His presence on record is second to none and he’s one of my favorite artists that I personally listen to. But for us, we’re real selective with who we work with, especially on the artist side, because we have to look at everything as a business. We did a corporate campaign with Nipsey and LG, and we did an in store signing to celebrate his mixtape, and we had kids waiting outside at like five in the morning without even a ton of promotion. It’s amazing what he’s done on his own up until this point. So, pooling our resources, we can make everything bigger and create a win-win situation for everybody. And try to do some stuff that a lot of people talk about in the industry—Oh, yeah, I’m doing it independent—I think we can be on the forefront of executing that. Especially with Nipsey, it’s more than just the music. From the art that he has, to his clothing line, it’s a great situation for us.

On upcoming projects:

Will there be a mixtape or anything before album?

Nipsey: Absolutely. Me and Skee are working on some stuff right now. Without going too much into detail, I’m in the studio real heavy. I just went on a crazy feature run. I’ve done records with a lot of artists in the game that I’m a fan of and that got movements and people watching them right now. We back in the studio 24/7, so I’m sure we gonna have more music than we end up using on the album. I’m also doing some collab projects with a couple people that we gonna announce closer to the summer. We gonna put the foot on the gas as far as content. And we not gonna throw out anything just to throw it out there. It’s gonna be upgraded. Like Skee said, I’m in a creative zone right now. The music is better than it’s ever been. The momentum we have, and the excitement, it’s time to really give the people something they can hold onto.

On MMG signing rumors:

There have been some rumors and tweets about you and Maybach Music Group teaming up. Is there anything there?

Nipsey: I’m a fan of Ross, I’m a fan of Maybach, Meek, Wale. From a business perspective and just a fan of they music. I ain’t gona really go into no further details about it, but I’m a fan of it and I feel what they doing all the way.